Real Stories of Superhero Fetish: Captain Spandex
The thrill of anonymity; the ego-boost of exhibitionism; the look and feel of hard muscle under silky, stretchy material; the fantasy of transformation and power that comes with roleplay: Superheroes have always been a source of immense excitement for me, but it’s very difficult to trace my superhero fetish back to its roots. In some ways, I feel it’s always been with me.
Captain Spandex as Clark/Kal-El
As far back as I can remember, I was devouring Spider-Man and Superman comics, swooning over reruns of the classic Batman TV series, and waking up early every Saturday to watch the adventures of any superhero cartoon within reach. Seeing costumed heroes on the pages of comics, or in animated form, was a thrill. Seeing those same heroes in the flesh, on a TV or movie screen was an obsession.
Once in a while, as I channel-surfed, I would catch Nicholas Hammond as The Amazing Spider-Man, or Michael Gray as Shazam. The stories were always enjoyable, but when Adam West in the Batman TV series or Christopher Reeve in Richard Donner’s film Superman were on-screen in costume, my focus was absolute — I’d watch the hero’s body, comic-made-flesh, as muscles and power radiated under spandex and cape. There was something different about those two that stood out above the rest: they were icons of confidence and power that I worshipped because I felt these were things I lacked in a childhood tainted by alcoholism and abuse. Seeing Batman and Superman come to life meant that they were real in some way, and that their abilities (realistically possible or not) were something I could adopt for myself as a means of escape.
The Captain at rest
I always wanted to be Spider-Man or Superman for Halloween, and once in a while my parents would indulge me. One day, around the age of eight, my siblings and I joined some other kids at our baby-sitter’s place. One of the other kids had come as Batman, in what I (inaccurately) remember as the most perfect reproduction of Adam West’s costume, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Of course, when you have Batman in your backyard, you are obligated to play Good Guys Vs. Bad Guys. That day, I let Batman defeat my pathetic bank-robber of a villain. And perhaps, I gave in a little too easily when Batman pinned me to the ground and held me there. At that age it was just fantasy, but I loved it nonetheless.
I maintained a sometimes-secret obsession with Superman and Spider-Man all through my childhood and teen years, complementing old fantasies with new ones about being treated with super soldier serum, finding Green Lantern’s power ring, or being given Shazam’s powers by a benevolent old man. There weren’t many outlets to explore the obsession, but I tried. How many other pre-teen boys snuck out of the house to see Superman IV in theatres just because the bad guy wore gold tights?
In high school, my childhood fantasies transitioned to sexual awakening at the same time as the late-80s fad of spandex in men’s locker rooms and sports fields spread throughout the continent. I had a crush on a boy in my class that was ramped up to epic proportions when he began to wear long spandex shorts in gym class — the plain black kind, with golden yellow panels on the outside of the legs. I secretly obsessed over him when he wore them and would take the locker next to him hoping that our bodies would accidentally touch. I asked my mom if I could have some of the same kind of shorts, but she said they were for girls. I was left wondering how they felt to wear, and my fantasy side wondered if they gave him extra athletic power… not unlike the alien suit worn by Ralph Hinkley on “Greatest American Hero”.
Once I had linked my school crush with spandex and superheroes, my fate was set. It was sealed when I masturbated for the first time around the age of 14. During that first time, I was overcome by the thrill of wearing a pair of cycling shorts I had secretly bought at a local thrift shop and kept hidden from my mom.
When I began to live on my own in university, I was free to explore my fetish at will. In addition to adopting a steady gym habit -- look good in spandex was always my mantra -- I began to collect pieces of lycra-based athletic apparel. I bought shorts, shirts, wrestling singlets, and a dive skin. By this time I had discovered a number of great communities on the Internet — gearfetish.com and spandex-party.com among them — where other men shared pics of themselves in gear, connected about their fetishes and fantasies, and found kinship with people like me, who until then had never imagined anyone else shared my kinks. My fetishes hadn’t been kept secret from my lovers up until that time, but none of them ever really embraced them; they’d allow online connections with other members of the community, but never fully-accepted coming home to someone lounging on the couch in full-body lycra. I remember a day when my ex suddenly stopped as he came down the hallway and spotted me in gear: “that’s going to take some getting used to,” he said. It was only through connecting with other people from Internet sites devoted to my fetishes that I began to assert my hero complex as a healthy and important aspect of my sex life.
As progress from my exercise regimen increased, so did my confidence. I began to use exercise as an excuse to wear spandex in public, taking up running and cycling and almost any other activity that provided an excuse to wear my favorite pieces of clothing. All of these items were cherished, but were never really close to what I really wanted — a Superman costume of my own. Many years later, once I graduated and started working a steady job, my regular habit of trolling eBay for cheap spandex revealed a decent Superman costume that someone was selling. I didn’t hesitate to bid, and I won the item. A few weeks later, I raced home from work and suited up for the first time, shaking with extreme excitement as I literally transformed into the same hero I’d idolized growing up. Looking in the mirror, I felt invincible, confident and irresistibly sexy. Within days I was addicted to the thrill of being Superman, and shared that thrill by adding superhero pics of myself to my online profiles.
Captain Spandex in iconic spider skin
People liked my spandex and superhero pics, which made me post more, which attracted more attention and views. In turn, I was encouraged to post more explicit pictures, merging my sexuality with every possible combination of gear that I owned, and occasionally adding props such as heavy chains. All of this activity in the online community led to longstanding friendships and online roleplays, live one-to-one webcam sessions, and more. I was loving it, and I began to make a bucket list of other costumes I wanted: Spider-Man, Shazam, Flash, Green Lantern, Captain Canuck, Cyclops, Wolverine… any hero that dressed in head-to-toe spandex became a hero whose skin I wanted to inhabit. I began to call Halloween my Annual Spandex Festival, and my friends got used to seeing me out in public as Superman, Spider-Man, or Wolverine. During these outings I discovered the pure joy of being a masked crusader in public. Anonymity freed me from feeling judged, and comments from strangers fueled my addiction even more. (“Not many guys could pull off Superman. You totally do.”). These days, comic conventions provide additional opportunities to suit up as a hero for a day, and as excuses to cross additional heroes off my costume list. I do it whenever I can. I most recently donned my really-good Spidey suit to a big comic expo in my hometown and had the time of my life. It justified working on two new Spidey-variant suits to wear to future cons.
One of the advantages of being a gearfetish.com member is the exposure to all kinds of other fetishes and kinks. Throughout my late 20s, my interest in spandex, superheroes, and muscle grew to encompass bondage, dominance, submission, leather, and more. My assertiveness about my own online persona, a growing expansion of leather-only events into “all-fetish” events, as well as my willingness to try new things, eventually connected my alter-ego and online handle Captain Spandex with a leather fetishist and kinkster that I met on recon.com. Our one night stand — involving latex and superhero gear, of course — soon blossomed into something more significant, and almost four years later the two of us are happily married and celebrating everything about each others’ kinks and fetishes.
That brings us to the current day, where Captain Spandex continues to post to Tumblr, connect with other heroes online, and thrives as a husband whose sexual adventures often include spandex, hero gear, dominating (most of the time), or being submissive (occasionally), and bondage. The good Captain’s super-strength is derived from his celebration of muscle, exhibitionism, and brightly-colored spandex in all its forms. My superhero alter-ego and his kinks do not define me, but they are deeply ingrained and kept close to the surface — skin-tight and oh-so-deliciously concealed under a business-like demeanour. My body thrums with the heartbeat of a hero. As far as Captain Spandex is concerned, real heroes still wear tights.
Editor's note: We are proud to introduce Captain Spandex, and active community member and ongoing contributor to How to Kill a Superhero. You can follow Captain Spandex on Tumblr. Want to share your own story of superhero fetish? Please email your entry to au@howtokillasuperhero.net and write "Guest Blogger" in the subject.
The Role of Spandex in Superhero Fetish
For each of us, as we have seen, the base of our fetish is something totally different and for some it is more than spandex: neoprene, rubber, leather, and for others, sports gear. Our fetish is something personal. For me it was a jock thing, but also a superhero thing. For both, it was the freedom to wear these items of clothing so freely, so publicly and be completely blasé about it. Athletes especially get me: they walk around in spandex like it is nothing at all. It means the world to me, and jocks drive me nuts!
Spandex, Lycra or elastane is a synthetic fiber known for its exceptional elasticity. It is stronger and more durable than natural rubber. It is a polyester-polyurethane copolymer that was invented in 1958 by chemist Joseph Shivers at DuPont's Benger Laboratory in Waynesboro, Virginia. The word spandex comes from the word “expands”.
The very birth of spandex is something otherworldly, cooked up in the lab around World War II like a science experiment. It's a direct result of the industrial age as synthetic fibers became more widely used for clothing. What always surprised me about the material is that many comic-book heroes predate that creation of spandex. Prior to that a cotton or wool blend was drawn on heroes and villains (or worn on TV and film versions), and it just doesn’t do the same job. The look is all wrong. But then spandex appears in the visual consciousness of the 20th century: Now the superhero costume makes sense" skintight and allowing all their muscles to be on full display, spandex becomes a thin shield for the naked male body. It is all that is keeping the body from being fully displayed.
Spandex fetishism is a fetishistic attraction to people wearing form fitting stretch fabrics or to the wearing of items of clothing made of such material. Spandex garments are often worn by swimmers, ballet dancers, wrestlers, rowers, cyclists, contortionists and circus performers, and spandex fetishists may incorporate fantasies about these activities into their particular fetish. One reason why spandex and other tight fabrics may be fetishized is that the garment forms a "second skin", acting as a surrogate for the wearer's own skin. Wearers of skin-tight nylon and cotton spandex garments can appear naked or coated in a shiny or matte substance like paint. The tightness of the garments may also be seen as sexual bondage. Another reason is that nylon-spandex fabric (preferred by many spandex fetishist) is often produced with a very smooth and silk-like finish, which lends a tactile dimension to the fetish - as well as a visual one. The pressure of tight garments against the genitals can become quite sensual.
What’s interesting is that while the definition mentions many of the jocks that wear spandex, including circus performers, but no mention of superheroes. True, we may be a niche within the fetish market, but nonetheless, spandex and superheroes walk hand in hand. Yet with the advent of Under Armour (God loves gays or he would have never given us Under Armour) it made spandex mainstream at the same time that Hollywood was taking spandex away from the superhero.
PHOTO GALLERY: The Role of Spandex in Superhero Fetish
Spider-Man and Superman still sport spandex (The Amazing Spider-Man was kind enough to make reference to it) but for the most part (and I blame the X-Men films for this) leather has replaced spandex. Nothing against leather, but looking at The CW’s Flash costume, I can tell you that you can’t run in leather. Of course, superheroes are a fantasy, so technically, they can do whatever their creators say they can do. But, luckily there is still hope: after many were up in arms about the new Fantastic Four trailer making no mention of the classic Fantastic Four suits, the sexy Miles Teller has informed us otherwise.
Going back to the Wikipedia entry, we see that rubber, neoprene, leather and spandex in particular for our case are something that as the definition explains, leads itself, in its very essence to bondage. One-piece suits are something that traps the body; we become a slave to clothing, something we should be able to control. It gives power to an inanimate object yet that power is kinda liberating. Many of us probably agree that we feel at our best when we are in our gear. I know for me, I feel more like a man trapped in a wetsuit or in spandex than any other time. The sensation of my physical body being contained and controlled by a mass-produced, lifeless object is such a turn on. Often seeing the empty shell of a suit or tights is the bigger arousal; the anticipation that it will house a body and contain it… add in the superhero cosplay complex, and it becomes even more interesting.
If only that were an actual line...
The idea of the hero and the idea of the alter ego entering that suit to become something new. Even in the real world the ideal of cosplay is to become your favorite hero via costume. Cosplayers have often said that this is a childhood fantasy, becoming the characters they looked up to and wanted to be in their youth. Like many of us in our teenage years, as puberty hit, we realized we didn’t just want to be them, but be with them. Cosplay becomes a space where people with a superhero fetish can see their heroes as living adults; but also as sexual beings.
While I’m all for the recent movement of cosplay is not consent as a way to create safe spaces for cosplayers at cons, I do feel that cosplay works as a visual medium. Like any visual medium it calls upon being looked at; in this case we are looking at people. It requires a gaze. The issue of objectification is problematic, but in truth anytime we post something online the point is that it is going to be looked at. Cosplay adds another dimension: we already look at the heroes in comic and here they are in the flesh. The mind can run wild with what to do with these characters and cosplay roleplay allows us to bring fantasy into reality and meld the two together.
Strange beginnings create a strange fetish; fictional characters wearing an artificial skin imbeds into our fantasies and now as grown men we wish to fulfill the fantasy. Like Roland, we too take a journey to discovery, to finding the limits of our fetish and fantasy as well as the extensions – will it stretch as far as the very fabric we love and adore? My vain attempt to create a definition only points out how open and undefined our fetish is, even if on the surface it is pretty basic. What does Spandex do for you as a fetish material? Tell us in the comments. For more images of superheroes in spandex, visit our 20 Iconic Images of Superhero Fetish or visit our Tumblr.
About our contributor iFitz
Hello everyone, very excited and happy to be part of the team and the community. I just moved to Toronto to pursue a masters in film and sociology (the former being my major passion). I’m 28 and really excited to be seeing this superhero fetish community develop. You can read a lot more in the story I previously wrote, but my fetish also includes wetsuits, athletic gear (spandex obviously) and shoes, mostly athletic shoes. I’m a little shy but online I’m game for chat and e-mails so drop me a line at ifitz@howtokillasuperhero.net
Superheroes in Bondage 101
Updated March 15, 2015: We added the Bad Ends blog to the blog recommendations section.
Superheroes and bondage go together the way that pizza goes with beer, or wine goes with steak. Besides the How to Kill a Superhero books (which feature superheroes in bondage), there are some other sites and products that do a pretty good job of turning up the crank on the superhero in tights by restraining him in rope, chains, water, and more. The list below was put together by Pablo Greene, and we'll be adding new items over time. We didn't include every site on this list. Instead, Pablo listed only the ones that have particular merit and have proven to be of high quality over the years. We think you'll enjoy some of these a lot. None of these pages is safe for work. Got a tip on more to add to this list? E-Mail us at au@howtokillasuperhero.net
Commercial Superhero-in-Bondage Sites
Eye of the Cyclone
Eye of the Cyclone has published quality comic-book-inspired stories using its own original superheroes and villains for more than a decade. This is a paid site, and a subscription gets you access to all their photo shoots and videos. The interface has not particularly kept up with the times, but you can navigate through the site to get the images you need. There are occasional video clips posted, but the real strength of this site is in its photos. The costumes pop, the models are muscular, and the poses are full of bondage, peril and domination. Worth the price if you like to mostly just look at photos.
Hero in Trouble
Hero in Trouble is pretty well known to superhero fetish fans, because they choose very muscular and handsome models and put them in superhero suits to be bound and tortured. This site has also been around for at least a decade, and it does one thing, and one thing only. You get photo gallieries with a paid subscription, as well as short clips of the hero struggling in bondage. Most clips do not feature a villain, and there are no storylines. If you prefer your clips shorter and are only concerned with the visuals of a muscular superhero, then this site would satisfy. The costumes generally are pretty good quality, too.
Can-Am Video
Can-Am Video is mostly known as an adult site devoted to wrestling and erotic wrestling, but throughout the years, they have published several great superhero bondage videos in their catalogue. The storylines are typically pretty shallow and not well acted, but the videos deliver in the action and images. Their videos put heroes through lasers blasts, net captures, drug injections, gags, ropes, shackles and mind control. There's no easy way to navigate to the videos but you can use their pulldown in search to see all their superhero titles. Lately the superhero videos have taken on a more standard look, so there's not much in the way of novelty here. Production values are high, and the costumes are really tight, and often ripped off. If you have the money to spend on DVDs or streaming subscriptions, this is your site.
Some of our favorites from over the years are the titles Super Studs: Toxic Water, Hangin' Up, Tales from the Chamber 2 (with a stellar performance by Jimmy Dean, who seems to have retired from the genre).
BG East Video
BG East Superhero Heels is one of the hidden gems inside BG East. If you're not familiar with BG East, they specialize in all things wrestling and erotic wrestling. You can argue that wrestling is really similar to superhero stories, because there's a fight between good and evil, revealing costumes and lots of domination. Well, over the years, the video company has ventured into the superhero genre with its Superhero Heels series. They are still wrestling matches, but you'll find villains with super powers and heroes who get unmasked in the course of a match. This site sells DVDs and also offers subscription streaming.
Kink.com and Bound Gods
Kink.com is one of the premier pornographers in the U.S. They publish videos for people, and featuring people of all genders, and they tend to focus on BDSM in most of their lines. Though they don't have a dedicated superhero line of sites, a couple of their titles below are worth the money if you like superhero stories with high production values and lots of hardcore sex after the costumes are ripped off.
The Moral Keeper vs The Evil Edgemaster - Super Heroes Series
Tumblrs about Superheroes in Bondage
The Sidekink
The Sidekink is one of the best Tumblrs dedicated to the genre. You'll find plenty of humiliated heroes in bondage, as well as some wrestling and lycra photos.
Captain Spandex
Captain Spandex is a very special friend of Pablo Greene and How to Kill a Superhero. He has great taste in guys and spandex, and though he doesn't always post images of guys in bondage, you'll find plenty there to get your superhero fetish going.
How to Kill a Superhero on Tumblr
The How to Kill a Superhero Tumblr is the site that started it all. If you want to see a curated set of guys in spandex, superhero costumes in all kinds of bondage, here you go. You'll also find humorous posts about comic books and superhero culture, as well as body types of various types represented.
Blogs with Superheroes in Bondage
Bad Ends Blog
The Bad Ends blog shows the true beauty of a superhero in peril. In fact, it's a comprehensive intro for people who want to understand why comic books have been so influential in developing images of superheroes in bondage. This blog is not to be missed, and it's a great addition to any fan of superhero erotica. Sadly, it's a very short blog that looks like it was abandoned in 2012. If you know the author please let them know they should continue. Nevertheless, it's a micro-museum piece.
Captured Heroes
The Tied Feet Guy writes The Captured Heroes Blog with humor, passion, and really great taste when it comes to superheroes in bondage. If you are often wishing you could see more twinks in superhero bondage or images of superheroes with athletic bodies, you'll want to check out this long-running spinoff from the main TFG blog.
Metalbond
Metalbond's Superhero Page Metalbond is one of the best curators and bloggers of all things bondage related on the internet. The site's library of bondage stories is worth a visit alone.
Ruff's Stuff
Ruff's Stuff Superheroes Category -- Ruff's stuff has a special love for superheroes, even though the site covers topics beyond superhero fetish. Be sure to click around other sections to learn about community events, find bondage video sites and to see hot guys in all kinds of gear and BDSM scenarios.